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Google, Apple, IBM Ditch College Degree Requirements

All the major technology companies have highly skilled employees. Many of them graduate from the best teaching institutions in the world. But that does not mean that college education is mandatory. Companies like Apple,Google, and IBM no longer hesitate to prioritize specific experiences or skills in place of diplomas.

Google, Apple, IBM Ditch College Degree Requirements
All major technology companies have highly skilled employees. Many of them graduate from the best teaching institutions in the world. But that does not mean that college education is mandatory: companies like the tech giant Apple, the tech giant Google, and the tech giant IBM no longer hesitate to prioritize specific experiences or skills in place of diplomas.

The finding comes from a survey by Glassdoor, an online job search service. The site listed 15 major US companies – including the three cited here (Google, Apple, and IBM) – that have opened advanced positions that do not necessarily require university training or any degree.

However, this is also doesn’t mean that these companies give up the qualification. What the Glassdoor survey shows is that if the candidate has a set of skills that fit the job, he can be hired even if he does not have a college degree.

Apple, for example, places a high value on the candidate’s experience, regardless of whether he got it in an academic setting or in other companies. Joanna Daly, IBM’s vice president of talent, told CNBC in an interview last year that the company takes into account skills built on boot camps, other jobs, or even on its own. About 15 percent of IBM employees in the United States do not have college degrees.

The case of the tech giant Google is quite interesting. Sergey Brin and Larry Page met at Stanford University when they were studying for a doctorate in computer science. They practically created the tech giant Google within the walls of the institution. In the early years, they tried to make the company remember university, both in the inner culture and in the physical spaces.

This approach has helped Google attract young talents who envisioned the chance to make a career in a company with a nontraditional internal culture. But the level of demand was high: it is said that for a long time the tech giant Google made a point of only hiring employees who came from top universities and who, in addition, had high grades.

It’s not like this anymore. Academic education remains important to Google – indeed, to Alphabet as a whole – but is no longer a requirement for hiring. In 2014, Laszlo Bock, then vice president of human resources, explained that the tech giant Google prioritizes the overall cognitive ability of the candidate, not his/her intelligence outcome.

“It’s the ability to learn. It is the ability to process on time. It’s the ability to bring together different types of information,” Bock added.

Not only considering diplomas in hiring have been a practice of most large US companies, but it seems to be more important for technology giants. Many of them find it difficult to fill vacancies, and in the quest for the talent they have realized that perfect academic curriculum is synonymous with good professional performance.